1 month ago

It really doesn't look like your deck has a focus. You've got some group-hug in there, but then you've got some annoying things in there like
Archetype of Imagination
and
Gwafa Hazid, Profiteer
and
Trygon Predator
. I'm not saying I don't like these cards, or that they aren't decent cards, but when you try to play group-hug with little to no group-hug effects, and then stack on annoying cards that might make you a target, then you really aren't focusing in on what you want to do (at least in my opinion).

If you are group-hug, then a card like
Archetype of Imagination
just screams to be removed from the board, especially if someone is invested in flyers. Ideally, playing group-hug means you are mostly running creatures that other players don't want to remove, and possibly are willing to protect on the table because they offer some sort of benefit, like the ones I mentioned earlier.

I'm kind of on the fence about the curse enchantments you are running. If you enchanted me with one of them, I'd probably go after you for it just out of principle. I'd rather run some pillowfort in their place, something like
Propaganda
and
Ghostly Prison
. These effects don't outright harm anyone else at the table right away, directing their attention elsewhere for the time being.

1 month ago

Hey, saw your forum topic asking for help. Good start, but I think you can expand on the stealing your opponents creatures strategy and get more value from creatures you steal. There's also several budget staple Commander cards to consider adding. All my cards suggestions are budget ($5 or less each).

What you want with Reactor/Scepter are cards that can untap Vorel to be able to use his ability more than one time a turn as well as other cards that interact with charge counters. You also want tutors for artifacts. With Sage you need to get a counter on him either with graft (Frogling), moving a counter from one permanent to another (Conduit) or target him (Bioshift).

Many of these cards are budget and cards like Study are expensive price, but entirely worth it if you're trying to be more competitive.
Toothy, Imaginary Friend
is a good creature with counter strategies and all these draw spells especially repeatable ones such as Remora and Study can really pump it. Fauna can be a repeatable creature tutor which is very helpful when your budget can't afford all the expensive price tutors. When playing Toothy you want
Reliquary Tower
because Toothy can draw a lot of cards and you want to keep all those cards in your hand.

2 months ago

3 months ago

I just finished building a fairly competitive Thrasios-Tymna
Aluren
combo deck. Certainly this will not fly with your playgroup because it is a dedicated combo deck, but in testing I still learned a fair amount about these commanders.

The first thing to realize is that both commanders draw you cards. Obvious, but for a deck building implication it means you don't need very much card draw at all. Hands that are 2 lands and 5 pieces of ramp are completely keepable. You play your entire hand by turn 3 and then slam Thrasios and start drawing 2-3 cards each turn because you have tons of mana.

I think that playing a lot of ramp is worthwhile, but a bunch of ramp doesn't necessarily mean you need to curve into big idiots.

I don't think there is any need to play a creature-heavy deck. Just because Tymna rewards hitting players doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do. Creatures like
Aven Mindcensor
or
Trygon Predator
which hate on opponents while being evasive attackers are very good.

Control is actually really viable for Thrasios/Tymna. The natural card draw means it's easy to keep multiple controlling options in hand every turn. In addition, if you leave mana open to play counterspells and don't end up needing them you can sink the mana into Thrasios instead.

I don't run tutors not because they are expensive (Though Wordly Tutor, Gamble and Mystic Tutor are fairly affordable as an upgrade), I don't want to make deck too (uhh) strong. I made
Lavinia, Azorius Renegade
deck which revolves around getting
Knowledge Pool
out, and if I draw one of the artifact tutors and have anti-counter in hand, I win, it's only a matter of time. Which is nice to spook new players, but not that great when I play N'th game with same people.

Trygon Predator occurrence in decks from the last year

Commander / EDH:

All decks: 0.02%

G/U (Simic): 0.71%

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